SANDSPAPER: The Big Sugar Sham?

posted by Everglades Trust | 0sc
October 26, 2016

SANDSPAPER: October 19, 2016. Written by Staff.

A strange state-level issue spilled into an awkward mess during a recent Pensacola City Council Meeting, when local officials were asked to back a somewhat odd effort to get legislators to dedicate more conservation funding for north Florida.

Something didn’t feel quite right. And it wasn’t just the dire warning from a local environmental advocate that a “shadowy entity” was about to “dupe” council with a “sham” resolution. It was also the weird phone calls.

“When I started getting calls, the interesting thing that I noticed was that the calls weren’t from here,” noted Councilman P.C. Wu. “I’m thinking, wait a minute, people in south Florida are calling me, telling me they want money up here in north Florida. I’ve never seen — you know, we’re not sitting here saying, ‘We should send more money to south Florida.’ So I thought it was quite puzzling to see people from south Florida calling, telling us they wanted to make sure that we get our fair share.”